


Seven Years

by 78bathsheba



Category: Hunger Games (2012), Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: AU, Aftermath of Torture, F/M, Implied or Off-stage Rape/Non-con, PEENISS, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, everlark
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-03-02
Updated: 2013-06-05
Packaged: 2017-12-04 01:25:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,590
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/704895
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/78bathsheba/pseuds/78bathsheba
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Peeta was in the hospital garden, hands in the dirt planting herbs, when the good Dr. Aurelius came to tell him he could go home.</p>
<p>“Where will you be going now?” he asked, and only Peeta could hear the undercurrent of excitement that laced the question. There it is, he thought wearily. Even the man who knows my deepest, darkest secrets expects me to go running back to District 12. To her.  </p>
<p>“You know,” he said thoughtfully, “I think I'm just going to travel for a bit.”</p>
<p>He could almost hear the doctor’s heart breaking over the sound of his own.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

_Clouds cannot cover secret places, nor denials conceal truth._

_-DEMOSTHENES, attributed, Day's Collacon_

:::::

Peeta was in the hospital garden, hands in the dirt planting herbs, when the good Dr. Aurelius came to tell him he could go home.

“Where will you be going now?” he asked, and only Peeta could hear the undercurrent of excitement that laced the question. There it is, he thought wearily. Even the man who knows my deepest, darkest secrets expects me to go running back to District 12. To her.

He was tired of it; tired of the strange sort of ownership everyone around him--particularly the Capitolites--seemed to feel. As if he owed it to them to be with Katniss, because they had become so very invested in their love, and wasn’t he the one who’d made them all fall in love in the first place? He could hear it in their voices, see it in the glassy glint of their eyes as they spoke to him of how The Star-Crossed Lovers of District 12 had impacted their lives, made them realize that the citizens of the Districts were neither cattle to feed them or chattel to own.

“You know,” he said thoughtfully, “I think I'm just going to travel for a bit.”

He could almost hear the doctor’s heart breaking over the sound of his own.

:::::

He packed a light bag, one of the ridiculous "credit cards" that was Panem's new form of currency, and the document that proudly declared him to be _Peeta Mellark: Victor_ and _War Hero_ , and provided special dispensation that allowed him access to just about anyywhere short of President Paylor's private washroom. All he wanted was a train ticket.

“Where to, sir?” the young Capitol woman at the station asked him, slightly breathless at meeting the famous Peeta Mellark, and, he thought with startled realization, flirting quite shamelessly with him as she leaned over the counter to display her ample, colorfully-tattooed bosom.

“Doesn't matter,” he said with his trademark golden smile, chuckling internally to hear her breath hitch as he turned the full force of it her way. “The first train out of here.”

:::::

His first stop was District Nine, which he knew little about and had no connections to.

He immediately loved the lonely beauty of the vast grain fields; the endlessness of the land and the openness of the sky were a comfort to him after the months spent in torture chambers, or underground, or in hospital rooms. He still couldn’t sleep, so he would often seek an empty field to lie in and watch the stars for hours at a time, long enough to track their slow circuit across the night sky. Surely, in the millennia these stars had spent traversing the heavens, they had seen every kind of human suffering and triumph, and it made him feel just the tiniest bit better to think that he couldn’t possibly be alone in his despair.

:::::

It took Haymitch almost a year to track him down. Peeta couldn’t say he was particularly surprised when, upon emerging from his usual path through the overgrown cornfield, he found the old drunk sitting on the porch, but he was disappointed to be found so soon.

“Hello, Haymitch,” he said calmly, though he couldn’t quite keep his hands from clenching into fists, or his jaw from tightening.

Haymitch looked him up and down. “Well, kid,” he finally nodded. “That’s certainly a new look you got there.”

Peeta was, for lack of a better description, still both famous and infamous, and he hated the attention it inevitably brought him. In desperation, he’d taken to ordering expensive bottles of hair dye from the Capitol and coloring his famous golden curls a dark brown. He couldn’t hide those tell-tale blue eyes, but the hair was usually enough of a distraction that most people didn’t immediately realize who he was, and left him alone. And he was alone. A lot.

When he found the solitude becoming more oppressive than healing, he decided to look for gainful employment, more to keep himself busy than anything else, since he still had all that Victor money he didn’t know what to do with. As much as he longed to do it, he realized that anything related to baking was too much of a giveaway, so he’d made the difficult decision to avoid it at all costs. Eventually, he’d begun working on a farm neighboring the abandoned homestead where he’d been squatting, helping with the planting and the harvest. So he worked, and worked, and worked, alongside the men and women of Nine, who were fortunate enough to have been little-touched by the war despite openly siding with the rebels. It helped. When autumn rolled around, his hands and heart ached to do nothing but sit in the fields and paint everything, but he threw himself instead into the back-breaking work of harvesting grain from fields which stretched into the horizon.

His neighbors were good, generous, and much-used to labor, and they reminded him (at times painfully so) of his own close-knit little district. They readily accepted him, as they had with the few other transplants who had shown up after the war. He lived with them, and ate with them, even singing alongside them and learning the bawdy songs they’d sing to keep the rhythm of their hands steady and their spirits lifted as they toiled. When they’d inevitably run out of songs to sing long before running out of fields to harvest, he returned the favor by making up some of his own and teaching them to his new friends. They laughed affectionately at him, and wondered out loud with teasing grins at how a boy so silver-tongued with speech could be such an astoundingly terrible singer. At times, the men--with their broad shoulders and gentle ribbing --reminded him of his father or brothers so much that he’d feign discomfort in his mechanical leg and lock himself up in his house to deal with their ghosts in private. Usually though, he took pleasure in it, and would briefly allow himself to pretend that the ribald comments were coming from his brothers.

If any of his neighbors had figured out who he really was, they were kind enough--and discreet enough--to pretend they hadn’t. As the days passed his fair skin burned in the sun, then tanned; with the dark hair and the sudden growth spurt he’d had around his eighteenth birthday, he was almost unrecognizable. Although, apparently, not to Haymitch.

Peeta walked past him and into the house, his former mentor entering without invitation and following Peeta into the kitchen.

“So, how are things?” Peeta asked mildly as he pulled off his worn tee-shirt, running the cloth over his face to wipe away the sweat and dirt.

“Let’s cut the shit, kid.” Haymitch grunted. He dropped down onto one of the rickety chairs at the dining table and promptly pulled out a flask. “You know what I’m here for.” He took a deep pull. “She needs you.”

“I think we both know she doesn’t need anybody.”

Haymitch snorted. “If you really think that, then you’re almost as stupid as she is. Listen,” he started, suddenly serious. “She’s not doing well. It took us six months to get her out of that damned house, and even then it was only to get her on a hovercraft to the nearest hospital.” He sighed. “She was malnourished—finally had enough food, mind you, just wouldn’t eat it—and she had a terrible infection from not taking care of her skin grafts.”

Peeta listened silently.

“Sae and I did everything we could to just get her out, get her around the living again, but whatever sickness it is that shut her mama down after Katniss’ pa died, well—it’s in her blood too.”

No response.

Haymitch was rambling now, half talking to himself. “She needs you. She thinks she's mourning Prim, because she's an idiot, and, sure, a part of her is--but we all know what's killing her is missing you. You know she’s too proud, and too foolish, and too convinced she doesn’t deserve you, to come get you herself. But what’s keeping you away? What’s keeping you away from her now that there isn’t anything standing in your way?”

Peeta stiffened. There it was. That ownership; as if he and Katniss were still a product offered up for public consumption, and he owed it to Panem to provide the happy ending it so desperately wanted. “Nothing standing in our way? Are you mad? We’ve got an entire bombed out district between us now,” he growled at Haymitch. “We’ve got Prim, and my mother, and my father, and Willem, and Christiaan, and a thousand other ghosts standing between me and Katniss.” He was shouting now, the frustration and the heartbreak cresting over and engulfing him. “We've got years of lies and secrets and..and.. humiliation. And in case you’ve forgotten, I’ve got a tracker jacker nest full of venom still running through my veins, and oh yeah, a little bit of programming shoved in here," he jammed a forefinger roughly into the side of his head,"that makes me want to kill her. You know, not much.” Peeta threw up his arms in disgust, whirled around, and stalked out the back door into the overgrown field. He ignored Haymitch’s calls, and kept walking until his half-metal leg gave out.

:::::

Things got pretty bad after that first visit, and Peeta found himself locked in a severe bout of depression, which then triggered episodes, which only depressed him further. After a few weeks, he found himself picking up old habits he'd long ago sworn to give up. He started drinking again, like after the first Games, and often found himself under the skirts of one eagerly mewling girl or another, trying to soothe the dull ache of his loss between their thighs. As if the sounds of their pleasure could drown out the doubt in his head, or the slick fluid of their their arousal act as a balm; as if he could exorcise some of the grief within him by spilling it across their bellies with his semen.

Sickened at himself, Peeta eventually swallowed his pride to write Dr. Aurelius. Within days, a full complement of medicines arrived at his door, along with a portable phone that he was instructed was so he could resume regular therapy sessions. Peeta woke one morning feeling more refreshed than he had in months, the medication finally having kicked in enough to allow him to step back and see his behavior for what it was--destructive, dangerous, and in direct opposition of what he needed in order to continue his healing. His time in Nine had been had been a welcome respite from the unending tumult of the last few years, and he’d reconnected with parts of himself that had nothing to do with the Games, or even with Katniss. It was a much-needed reminder that he existed outside of her, beyond her, without her. He thought wistfully that perhaps this is how he could have been, if he’d never seen her that day in her red dress and dark braids.

But he did, and his tender crush had grown into admiration and respect for the steely-eyed girl. And he would never--could never--regret his decision to spin his affections into an act of defiance so perfect executed and timed (though of course he had no idea of any of this while he spilling his guts onstage with Flickerman), that it spurred a nation into rebellion. Nor would he ever regret their relationship blossoming into love. Love! While the world fell apart and burned at their feet, he had fallen in love, and felt fairly certain that Katniss was falling right alongside him. Their nights together on the train during the Victory Tour were a revelation, and he learned the taste of Katniss’ tears along with the taste of her lips; learned the curve of her slight body against his while they slept, anchoring him in reality when too often he found himself drifting back to the arena, convinced that he was still hidden in the stream bank, delirious and dying, and everything that had come after was just a fevered dream....

Then, the madness of the Quell, and his extended stay at the Capitol’s finest torture chambers. Where they took him apart, piece by piece, and rebuilt him as they wished. Sometimes they put him back together just as he was; sometimes, they put him together again, but just slightly different, so that he was off-balance, and couldn’t trust himself. They did this--over and over--until they hit upon the perfect combination: Peeta, with his love twisted into fear and hate. It haunted him, the things they’d done. The things he’d done. It was something that Katniss could never understand, and for that he was grateful, that she need never know the depths a person could be brought to; never need to learn that there is no bottom, no threshold to be crossed where pain stops--there is always somewhere lower, always some fresh misery to be discovered. Katniss could never understand; very few people still living ever could.

But he didn’t let them win then, and he sure as hell wasn’t going to let them win now. He was not going to do them the favor of destroying himself, not after he’d fought tooth and nail to hold on to the smallest scraps of himself that he could salvage. And as much as he loved the vastness of Nine, he yearned to be somewhere that felt like home, and missed the closeness and darkness of the woods; somewhere he could sort through the things he’d learned during his peaceful introspection in Nine. So he packed up his cards and his document, his portable phone, and a couple of bottles of hair coloring (just in case), and set off to bid his neighbors farewell, promising he would return, and meaning every word.

He was at the train station in time to catch the first train to District Seven.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Looking back, Peeta always found the early months he spent in Seven a red blur of chaos and rage. However, he was at least sane enough to recognize this time as a necessary part of recovery, and would allow no one to judge them for doing what they needed to do to survive. Not even himself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't own these characters. If anything, they own me.

 

_Bitterness is like cancer. It eats upon the host. But anger is like fire. It burns it all clean._

_-Maya Angelou_

 

 

:::::

 

"What the hell are you doing here?" Johanna greeted in typical fashion from the half-closed door.

 

"I had nowhere else to go," he shrugged.

 

"She's out, you know," she countered, face carefully expressionless. "They dumped her back in District Twelve. Haymitch is babysitting her."

 

"I know," Peeta said simply, stepping past her and through the doorway. "But my family is dead, my district burnt to ash, I'm insane, and now, apparently, she is too. It really doesn't feel like home anymore."

 

:::::

 

Looking back, Peeta always found the early months he spent in Seven a red blur of chaos and rage. He and Johanna had so very much hate in the beginning that it blinded and consumed them: hate for the Capitol, hate for themselves, hate for the allies and loved ones who didn’t survive. Hate for some of those who did.

 

In their desperate need to understand what and why they had survived, they crashed into and clung to one another, working out their demons and comforting each other the best they could with the limited tools of their broken minds and battered bodies. It was a short-lived scenario at best, the sexual equivalent of punching a wall--but they each needed to be with the other, to be with someone who understood the torture, the rape, and the hijacking, and this seemed a logical extension of the unique intimacy they had developed in the Capitol. Peeta was at least sane enough to recognize this incarnation of their relationship as a necessary part of recovery for both of them, and would allow no one to judge them for doing what they needed to do to survive. Not even himself.

 

And so they went about the business of parsing out the nasty little truths they learned at the receiving end of the Capitol’s billy clubs, scalpels, electrodes, and cocks, and worked at taking back their power. They embraced their anger and let it wash over them like a purifying fire, let it burn everything away--the scarred skin, the mutilated and missing flesh, the fractured bone, the broken heart, the unbearable weight of humiliation and guilt that whispered and tugged in the backs of their minds. Let it all burn away until all that was left was the essence of who they were: something small and free and untouched by the corruption around it. A glimpse at those few brief moments before the Games, the Quell, the Rebellion, and The War when they were nothing but themselves.

 

And because they had no one else--Johanna having lost her family before the Rebellion, and Peeta because of it--they became their own makeshift family, their relationship quickly moving beyond the dynamics of sex and violence and mellowing into something comfortable and sibling-like. Johanna was his family now, and it was fitting, Peeta sometimes mused when he was feeling especially old and grim, that after suffering an occasionally violent childhood and a so far spectacularly violent adulthood, that even the family he chose should be born of blood and despair.

 

:::::

 

He was coming home after a day in the forest, exhausted and paint-covered, when he heard the familiar voice. “Fuck,” he groaned, unceremoniously dropping his easel and paints on the ground before turning on his heel to head back to into the forest.

 

“Well, well, well,” Haymitch drawled, walking out onto the porch. “Good to see you again, boy.” Peeta shot his old mentor the finger--an archaic, but still-appropriate gesture he’d picked up from Johanna--without turning or breaking his stride. He could hear Haymitch guffawing as the trees closed around him, and he kept walking until he'd left even the echoes behind.

 

:::::

 

It was late, practically morning, when Peeta returned. He crept into the house as silently as he could, willing his false leg to cooperate. He was quite pleased at his stealth, having made it through the living room, up the stairs, and down the hall to his room with barely a noise.

 

“He’s gone, Peet.”

 

Peeta almost jumped out of his skin, whirling around and automatically falling into a defensive stance, but it was only Jo, struggling into a short robe as she came out of her room. Her thick chestnut hair--worn short again--stuck up in awkward angles around her head, and Peeta couldn’t help grinning at her disheveled state.

 

“Yeah, yeah, like you look any better,” Johanna grumbled, brushing past him and sitting down on his bed with a yawn. “You look like you slept under a rock. And you smell like shit.”

 

Peeta dropped down on the bed and proceeded to pull the pristine white sheets up to his chin, heedless of the dirt and paint that still covered  him. “Yes, well, I hardly had time to freshen up for our unexpected visitor, Jo,” he snorted. But he had to ask. “He was unexpected right? You didn’t call him and tell him I was here?”

 

Johanna turned to glare at him. “I’m gonna pretend you didn’t say something so stupid, and just move right along.” She took a deep breath and dug her palms into her eyes; out of exhaustion or frustration, he couldn’t tell. “He heard from Katniss’ mom, who heard from a healer in District Eleven, who heard from a healer in District Who-Gives-A-Fuck, who heard from the healers here in Seven that you were staying with me. And that we, ah, were beating the shit out of each other or something. Basically that they were here a lot, patching us up.” She shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s been months since they’ve had to come up here, so I guess news just travels slow.”

 

Peeta covered his face with a pillow, cursing under his breath. “So Haymitch decided to come up here to try to get me to come back to Twelve?”

 

“Yup.”

 

“And what did you tell him?”

 

“The truth. Which I was sure to point out was none of his fucking business. That we’d worked through some stuff in the only way we could. That it involved a couple of fist-fights, and a knife that one time, and some blood, maybe, and some sex," Johanna grinned as Peeta groaned in protest, "but that you were doing better, I guess.” She paused. “That I was doing ok, too.”

 

Without removing the pillow, Peeta felt blindly along the bed until he found one of Johanna’s hands, and clasped it tightly, silently reassuring her that she was, in fact, doing better as well. She sighed, and after a moment’s pause, crawled under the covers with him, muttering about the smell as she settled her head on his shoulder.

 

“What are you _doing_ here, Peeta?”

 

The silence stretched for so long that she almost fell back asleep.

 

“I don’t know, Jo.” His voice was so small and lost that she instinctively held him tighter. “I don’t know where else to go. I can’t go home. What’s waiting for me in Twelve? My parents’ ashes? My brothers’ bones? Haymitch?” He exhaled noisily. “Katniss?”

 

Johanna didn’t answer, lost in her own thoughts. She hadn’t had anyone to come home to either. She’d originally gone back to Seven simply because that was where her stuff was. Eventually, however, she'd come to find comfort in the familiar vastness of the forests that surrounded her, and learned that the softness she occasionally saw in her steely-eyed neighbors was not pity--which she didn't want--but genuine concern.

 

"You don't know what she did to me," he whispered, shutting his eyes against the tears that were always just below the surface whenever he allowed himself to think of Katniss. "She broke me, Jo. Better than Snow ever could, she broke me. And I just kept coming back for more, while the whole nation laughed at me. Do you know what the last thing she ever said to me was?  “Let me go!” Right before she started screaming for Gale. Maybe I should listen to her."

 

Johanna sat up and pulled the pillow off his face, ignoring his sounds of protest."You really are an idiot, you know." She slammed the pillow back down and moved to rise. "This isn’t about Hawthorne, not really. And if you think for one moment that you didn’t have all of Panem swooning over every kiss, then you’re not giving yourself enough credit. As for Brainless, well, she was desperately in love with you, whether she wanted to admit it or not. Maybe she still is, I don’t know. Remember this: she didn’t know what the rebels were doing during the Quell. For all she knew, Haymitch was going to stick to his word for once in his life and get you out of there alive. You. Do you understand that? _You_. She wasn’t just giving up her life, she was giving up her sister, her mother, that hot fake cousin of hers, everything--to ensure _you_ got out alive.

 

She may have broken your heart, but you’re giving Katniss way too much credit saying she broke you. That’s the hijacking talking, and maybe a little bit of Mama Mellark,” Peeta smiled grimly at Johanna’s bluntness. “But neither a sadistic fuck like Snow or a cold bitch like your mother were able to break you, so I don’t know how you can say that one underfed girl with commitment issues could have that honor.”

 

“It’s not real,” Peeta muttered tiredly, struggling into a sitting position so he could look at Johanna. “It can’t have been. It doesn’t make sense.”

 

“No, it doesn’t,” she sighed heavily as she made her way to the door. “And it will never make sense until you talk to her. Listen: don't do it for her. Don't do it because you owe Abernathy or those Capitol freaks anything, because you don't. Do it because you need to learn the truth, then close that door if you need to. But know this: whatever greater thing is out there--God singular, gods plural, fate, destiny, flying spaghetti monster, whatever--has seen fit to tie you two together. And you will never heal--not really--unless you face her, and find out the truth only she could tell you, because only she was there with you. I don’t know how it will play out, if you two are gonna get married and bone and make fat little babies, but I do know this--you two are bound together. It’s not fair, but that’s what it is. It’s always been you and her. It always will be, just like stupid Finnick and Annie.”

 

Peeta’s head snapped up. Johanna never mentioned Finnick.

 

She resolutely ignored Peeta's raised eyebrow.  "So I’m gonna do you a favor. As much as I’ve enjoyed you moping around my house, you can’t hide here forever.”

 

“Jo--”

 

“Nope,” Johanna grinned. “I’m not telling you to go confess your undying love for her and shit, because I couldn’t care less about that. But you’re my brother now. My blood. The only blood I have left. And you’re not going to be whole until you heal, and you can’t heal if you don’t face your demons. And a lot of those demons look like Katniss. So I’m gonna kick your pasty ass out.”

 

“Wait, did you say ‘pasty’ or ‘pastry’?” Peeta deadpanned.

 

“Fucking bread jokes?! Really?!" she cackled. “Get the hell out of bed, take a damned shower, and get your shit packed."

 

:::::

 

“So you got everything?”

 

“Yeah.” Peeta looked closely at Johanna, taking in her tired eyes, and the way her finely muscled arms crossed over her chest. “Are you going to be ok?” he asked carefully. “By yourself?”

 

She rolled her eyes. “Oh for the love of Effie Trinket’s pink merkin--I’ll be fine, Peet. Besides, I’ve got...stuff...going on.”

 

“Jo.”

 

“I’ll be fine. And trust me, I won’t be alone for long, if you know what I mean.”

 

“Jo.”

 

Peeta put his rucksack down and rushed to her without warning, wrapping around her until she softened, burying her face in his broad chest and relaxing into his embrace. “You’re my sister now,” he whispered fiercely into her hair. “Remember that. The days you can't remember anything else, remember that. So take care of yourself."

 

He thought he heard a sniffle, but prudently refrained from mentioning it.

 

:::::

 

“Excuse me, when’s the next train out of here, and where is it going?” he asked the harried older man behind the counter.

 

Peeta had agreed to leave, though he warned Johanna that he wasn’t ready to face either Twelve or Katniss yet. She’d suggested that he continue travelling, to find himself, find peace, and, according to Jo, “find a pair of fucking balls so you can go talk to Kitty Kat already.” He’d heard that Mrs. Everdeen was living in 4, and he knew for certain that Annie was, so that was out of the question. There was no way he was going back to Thirteen, or the Capitol, and he had no interest in Districts One or Two, where there were still too many pockets of Capitol loyalists. That left Three, Six, Eight, Ten, and Eleven.

 

“Twenty minutes, going to...District Three,” he responded.

 

“Perfect,” Peeta said with a dazzling smile that seemed to fluster the attendant. “I’d like a ticket, please.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, if you got through this chapter without hating me too much, I commend you. This is my headcanon of Peeta and Johanna, and if you don't like it, I'm ok with that. Do rest assured that they're staying platonic going forward. However, if you're a glutton for punishment like I am, and are interested in reading more about that particular time in their relationship, read my one-shot "Love is Not All." Although I wrote it before "Seven Years," it's kind of a deleted scene, and greatly informed the writing of this story as a whole.
> 
> Hit me up on tumblr (78bathsheba.tumblr.com). I haven't been around much lately, but I'm trying to be.
> 
> Constructive criticism and genuinely engaged inquiries are always welcome. Trolls and hate are not.

**Author's Note:**

> Constructive criticism is welcome. Thanks to everyone who was kind enough to encourage me during Six Sentence Sundays to go ahead and actually write this. A very special thanks to birdlovesafish (go follow her on tumblr, she's awesome) for nudging me in the right direction. Come find me on tumblr as well, where I also go by 78bathsheba, because I'm too lazy to come up with multiple pseudonyms.


End file.
